How do you make sure to incorporate your partner’s perspective, even if it’s your “domain”
Photo courtesy of Alok Deshpande
I’ve gotten a lot of questions about how dividing up tasks using “domains” works in practice. Specifically, what happens when something is in one partner’s domain, but the other person has a strong point-of-view? For example, Jason is fine with me doing the grocery shopping and choosing what we eat for dinner each night, but he’s (understandably) less okay with me unilaterally picking and decorating our apartment (especially because he works from home and has a home office). At the same time, I didn’t want him to feel responsible for integrating his needs and perspective into the apartment-hunting process because that felt contrary to the spirit of our arrangement. A rigid rules based approach - while it came from a loving place - doesn’t always work.
What we’ve tried:
Developing a “theory of mind” about the other person: this was by far the most time-intensive process, but it’s paid off in spades. A theory of mind is basically the ability to attribute beliefs, intents, desires, emotions, and knowledge to yourself and others. It’s a key part of understanding that other people have different perspectives than our own.
With Jason and I, this meant spending lots of time trying to understand the other person’s worldview and core belief system vs. memorizing a set of the other person’s preferences. The former has helped us both better anticipate and imagine each other’s needs. For example, when we first moved in together, Jason seemed totally happy with the place we settled on - an apartment that was small but had awesome city views. Right before we signed the lease with our broker, I asked Jason if he was totally sure he liked the apartment, and he reassured me he did. It wasn’t until later - much later! - that I learned he actually found city views stressful and preferred living on quiet, tree-lined streets. It took me a while to realize that Jason is a “go along to get along” guy, so asking him to confirm he was OK with an apartment in front of a broker right before we officially signed the lease (no pressure!) was not the best way to solicit his opinion. We both learned to compromise - I learned to be more thoughtful about making sure he was on board with big decisions, and he learned that I’m direct and it really is okay to disagree with me.
Trying to put on my “how would Jason see this” hat has helped me not only understand where Jason is likely to want input but also be reasonably close in predicting how he’ll feel about a decision without expecting him to spell everything out.
Recognize that we each have different priorities: Developing a theory of mind about Jason and understanding how he approaches decisions has also helped me understand things that would otherwise frustrate me. For example: while I do all the grocery shopping, there’s one piece Jason manages: coffee. I’m not very into coffee (I actually only drink decaf and more for the ritual of it), but there’s one part I care about: some sort of creamy, foamy milk on top. Things were great until one day, Jason apologetically handed me a latte with no foam, explaining that the new milk - cashew milk - he was trying didn’t foam well.
“I bought a bunch of it, so it’ll be a few days before I can foam the milk again,” he explained.
I was mildly annoyed because the milk he had previously been using had foamed perfectly, but it’s just milk, right? I figured it’d be resolved in the next few days.
But it wasn’t. The next week, it happened again. And the next. Soon, it seemed like every day, I was getting the “no foam in your coffee” apology. It drove me crazy! Finally, I asked him what was going on. Why couldn’t he just use the milk that foamed?
What I learned was Jason, doting husband that he is, decided he would find the perfect milk. Even though he had found a milk that worked, he decided he didn’t want something to “just work.” He wanted perfection. He had a long list of criteria: organic, potentially non-dairy, unsweetened, available at Trader Joe’s, minimized additives, foamed well; the list went on and on.
When I thought about Jason’s approach, though, it made sense in the context of who he is: fundamentally, Jason’s an engineer by training. His entire career is predicated on the idea that everything can be optimized infinitely, so his natural instinct was to find the best possible milk for my coffee. I’m much more of a “done is better than perfect” person. When he realized what I really prioritized, he went back to the milk that foamed beautifully, and I went back to my happy morning ritual (although, occasionally, he can’t resist and a pitiful puff of poorly-foamed rice milk will end up in my coffee mug).
Learn from each other’s experiences: Taking the time to understand how Jason approaches the world has pushed me to rethink how I should approach different situations. For example, I tend to be much more emotional than Jason is. If something goes wrong, such as bad customer service, my instinct is to push back solely for the principle. When I moved back to New York, I had a big dispute with my landlord in Mountain View - they owed us a bunch of money but refused to pay. I was livid and wanted to fight back, but it was Jason who gently pointed out that pursuing this wasn’t worth my time and energy - literally. He was right, of course. Logically, it would’ve been insane to take my landlord to small claim’s court, and 100% not worth the hassle. It was an important takeaway for me to think about whether I’m letting emotions cloud my judgment (and, vice versa, it’s been helpful for Jason to see how, in some instances, leaning on emotions can result in better decisions).
Similarly, when I was recently staffed on a big project at work, I mentioned offhandedly to Jason that I felt very lucky to have been put on something so visible. He pushed back on my word choice.
“Would a man say he got lucky?” he asked. “Or would he say he was finally recognized for his awesome work and put on a big project?”
He went on to explain that none of his guy friends had ever referred to their career success as luck. It was a good reminder to be (reasonably!) entitled to my career successes and take pride and ownership in them.
Would you ever develop a theory of mind for your partner? Have you applied something to your own life that you’ve learned from your partner! Let me know in the comments below!